Drinking Buddies
by IGdude117
Summary: An ex- Earth Empire soldier reminisces about the Battle of Republic City. One Shot. Picture taken from @AvatarBlogger on Twitter. The Legend of Korra is not my property.


What?

Oh, you want to buy me a drink? Go ahead, I won't complain.

Ah, I see. You want to talk about _that_. What tipped you off? The haircut? The medal? It's usually the medal that sets people off.

Well, you were kind enough to buy, so I'll indulge you.

You know how I know you're a fan of the Avatar?

You all have the same… _look_. Like this grandiose delusion that everything is always going to turn out alright. Some call it naivety, like it's a bad thing; I'm inclined to disagree.

See, the thing about you people is that you're determined to enforce justice. It's admirable, really. _She_ was a lot like that, before…

Why do you want to know?

I'm not suspicious, just… most people assume we're just tyrannical fanatics.

Well, I was born in the city of Seosong to a… who am I kidding? You don't give a damn, do you? You just want to know about those times.

I joined the Great Uniter because I genuinely thought that what I was doing was right. And you know, for a good while, it was. We'd roll up, hand out supplies to starving villages, and we were the heroes. You know Bolin? Yeah, _that_ Bolin, the one who got delusions of grandeur and is running the United Republic from city hall, he was a lot like us.

Sure, we rolled out the mecha suits and the infantry when a town got pretty ornery, but she always used to say that a show of force would help unity come a whole lot sooner.

And we believed her. Some of us still do.

I first began to doubt at Zaofu. When we captured Beifong's daughter and _her_ kids, a lot of the guys began wondering whether this crusade was for unity or personal revenge. When the Avatar showed up, a lot of the metalbenders next to me got real nervous.

I mean, _our_ Avatar fought those anarchists and the Equalists, and before her, the Ozai Fire Nation and stuff. Some of the guys joked that 'that was a sign as good as any that we were bad guys in a mover'.

But I didn't buy it. I still believed in the goal. And when Kuvira took out the Avatar… well, there was a lot of partying _that_ night.

I guess what most people like to talk about is the Battle of Republic City. The great battle of our time.

I was an infantryman- a metalbender. Most of my buddies who joined were just earthbenders, serving as the normal footsloggers. We metalbenders got the full deal- the helmets, the armor, the whole nine yards.

So after Kuvira's mech stomped through the United Forces, we were tasked with keeping the United Forces under wraps until the surrender was formalized. Once Bataar got captured and the Avatar attacked the mech, everything hit the fan.

Almost immediately, the entire pen of troops- some ten thousand troops, I'm told, broke out of our encirclement and tried to retake the perimeter. Our reinforcements, the tanks, the other mechasuits, the airships, everything, fought back.

To our west, the Fire Nation troops encamped in the mountains fought against the 3rd Division, and to the east the waterbenders fought against the 4th. We had the 1st and 2nd- two full infantry divisions, and we still had the fight of our lives.

I gotta hand it to those bastards, they fought well. It was… different, fighting against all four elements. Like the force of an Avatar combined in about ten thousand angry troops. I lost a lot of good buddies in that battle, but, hey, I don't blame them.

I actually have a lot of respect for Iroh and his troopers.

I remember about three or four hours into the battle, I was cradling one of my best friends who had taken a direct hit from an ice spike- went clean through him. He was telling me to give some personal effects to his folks when the Mech went down.

Morale wavered for a bit. We were being attacked on all fronts, and the so-called 'pushover' of Republic City was pushing back a hell of a lot harder than we had thought.

When all of that stuff went down, with the cannon firing out of control and the spirit portal- understand, we weren't there for that. We were still on the outskirts, trying to maintain the thin corridor where we were funneling mecha suits in by the dozen.

By that point, I had run out of most of the metal we had, and was bending rocks at the distant United Forces line, cradling a pretty painful burn on my leg, courtesy of a firebender.

To the eastern flank, some of the United Forces nonbenders had tried to make a rush- crossbows and melee weapons made a real comeback there, but the tanks and mecha suits came in handy.

Then, as the tide began to turn, we got the call.

Kuvira had surrendered. We were to return home and await debriefing.

Talk about lost fortunes.

The voyage back was… tough. The airships were filled to the brim with the dead and injured, so most of us, already exhausted, either rode on the noisy tanks or marched back in columns. Kuvira was in custody, Baatar, it was said, had defected, and the Avatar had triumphed over the so-called 'technological marvel' of the world's largest mecha suit.

Plus, with all of that spirit stuff, with the new spirit portal- it was a lot to take in.

We formally turned in our stripes and were discharged about a month or two later. And the damned Avatar was on vacation in the spirit world or wherever while we struggled to reinsert ourselves in a world we had, to be honest, brutalized.

We became outcasts.

For myself, I just travel from town to town, seeing what work I can get. Some towns are friendlier than others. Reeducation camps usually mean we get stuff thrown at us. Others are… tamer.

I don't blame them. I'd be lying if I said that the reeducation system, the reorganized labor, the resource acquisition, was a good thing.

I don't know.

A lot of what she said was true. I still hold it dear, at least.

But I suppose the ultimate irony is that the Great Uniter didn't really unite much of anything at all.

Well, thanks for the drink.

It helped.


End file.
